The trade-off between economic efficiency and food self-sufficiency in using Sudan's irrigated land resources

A shift in Sudan's food production strategy towards more reliance on the ir rigated sector for food supply has been induced by the severe food shortage s following the early 1980s drought and reduced availability of food aid. C oupled with the high yield potential of irrigated wheat under modern techno logy revealed by recent research results, this led to significant expansion s in the areas of irrigated food crops, especially wheat after 1989. This p aper used domestic resource cost analysis to examine whether the expansion in irrigated wheat production represents the most efficient option for usin g Sudan's irrigated land resources as compared to cotton, the country's mos t important cash crop competitor. At the 1993 prices, medium-staple cotton dominated various wheat technologies in terms of economic efficiency. An ef ficiency frontier was constructed to evaluate the sensitivity of competitiv eness results to changes in productivity gains and price shifts. Wheat yiel ds currently achieved by average farmers on the scheme need to increase by more than 50% for wheat to compete with cotton at the 1996 prices. In other words, currently one ha of exported cotton generates economic returns that are sufficient to import about 50% more wheat than can be domestically pro duced from the same ha under average farmers' practices in Gezira. In addit ion to its superiority over wheat in economic efficiency terms, cotton has larger employment benefits than wheat, being the more labour intensive ente rprise. This means that expanding irrigated wheat production in Gezira for food self-sufficiency at the expense of cotton reduces employment opportuni ties in addition to compromising economic efficiency. Priority should there fore be given to increased investment in research on improving cotton produ ction technology, marketing and lint quality. On the other hand, it is impo rtant to introduce more effective policy measures for faster adoption of im proved wheat technologies to close the gap between potential and current yi eld levels. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.